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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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Almost
all serious stories in the world are stories of a failure with a death in it.
But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat. To me that's the central
theme in Western culture, the lost paradise.—Orson Welles

As
the first few months of 1991 begin to unfold and the dishearten­ing events of
the new year start to accumulate like so many shadowy clouds across a
threatening sky, one searches for safe haven, wherever it may be found, in an
attempt to provide a barrier against the anxiety of the moment. Some newspaper columnists
have noted the greater attendance recorded at churches and synagogues across
the country as evidence of Americans' increased interest in religion. Other
social commentators have remarked upon the newly found closeness displayed by
members of many communities whose ties to one another have been symbolized by
the yellow ribbons encircling a large number of the nation's trees, especially
in those towns or cities where military bases are located and the families of service
personnel assigned overseas duties still live. In addition, various film
critics have published articles crediting the troubling times for the surprising
success of "escapist films" such as Pretty Woman, Ghost, or Home
Alone. However, one might discover some sense of security in another sort
of diversion.

Annually,
as Hollywood begins its countdown of days to the Academy Awards ceremonies,
film enthusiasts avert their attention from the troubling concerns of the
moment to take a nostalgic look at movies and artists of the past that have
earned the respect of Oscar, or to reconsider films and filmmakers that have
been spurned by Oscar. This year, just such a backward glance seems more
appropriate than ever, as the film industry will mark the 50th anniversary of
the opening of Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles.

No
film in cinema history has received as much praise and adula­tion as Citizen
Kane. Throughout the decades since its opening in July of 1941, Citizen
Kane has been revered by critics, scholars, and film buffs as the best film
ever made. More has been written about this movie—its script, its cast, its
produc­tion problems, its historical signifi­cance, its social commentary, its
crit­ical reception, and, of course, its director—than about any other work
since the invention of celluloid film. Citizen Kane is the dominant example
used to illustrate filmmaking at its finest in courses of film appreciation,
film criticism, or film production. Even literature anthologies published for
use in college English courses, such as Oxford University Press's Elements
of Literature, include Citizen Kane alongside the other works of
great litera­ture that have helped define our culture. An international poll of
more than 120 film critics conduct­ed every decade by Sight & Sound, the
official film journal of the British Film Institute, continually ranks Citizen
Kane as the greatest film ever made. In fact, the survey for the 1980s
indicated Citizen Kane's lead position was stronger than ever and the
status of Orson Welles more solid, as he received more votes than any other as
the greatest director in cinema history.

Nevertheless,
as the 1991 Academy Awards draw near, one is reminded of the controversial
treat­ment Citizen Kane and its director received at the Oscar
ceremonies honoring the films of 1941. Citizen Kane had been universally
praised by critics like John O'Hara, Gilbert Seldes, and 'Archer Winsten, as a truly
great landmark film—in the words of Time magazine, "the most sensational
product of the U.S. movie industry." Only those news­papers and magazines
owned by William Randolph Hearst, on whom Kane's character is transparently based,
declined to join the parade offering acclaim. Earlier, Hearst had attempted to
buy the negatives of the film's master copy, offering to meet any price, in
order to destroy the picture. In addition, the premiere of Citizen Kane, originally
scheduled for Valentine's Day of 1941, had to be cancelled because Hearst had
threatened the film distributors and theatres with retri­bution. Only after a
lawsuit brought by Hearst against RKO failed did the studio release the film
for public showings—although the studio did limit the film's screenings.

Citizen
Kane received nine Academy Awards
nominations (Best Picture .Director, Actor, Screenwriter, Editor,
Cinematographer, Decorator, Score, Sound), but was honored only for its
screenplay. As many publications have demonstrated throughout the last five
decades, most prominently The Citizen Kane Book by Pauline Kael, Oscar
Dearest by Peter H. Brown and Jim Pinkston, and Marion Davies by
Laurence Guiles, Orson Welles and his film were victimized by the social
politics of the time. As Brown and Pinkston point out in their book,
"Welles's Oscar K.O. was a political defeat, not an artistic one, and that
knock­out was sealed the minute Hollywood realized that the doomed, alcoholic
mistress in Citizen Kane was meant to be Marion Davies," Hearst's
mistress and a mainstay of the Hollywood social scene. The film community, in denying
Welles the recognition he deserved, succumbed to pressures to hold to a
politically expedient line rather than to honor the film on the basis of its
artistic merit. As columnist Hedda Hopper declared at the time, the Academy was
willing to honor "almost any other film except Citizen Kane."

The
atmosphere at the Academy Awards was so filled with rancor that each time a
nomination for Citizen Kane was announced, boos and hisses could be
heard throughout the auditorium. Even the awarding of an Oscar for the screenplay,
which Welles was forced to share with co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, was a
slap in the face for Orson Welles, since many in the community considered
Welles's credit for the scriptwriting as unde­served and saw this as an
opportuni­ty to display support for Mankiewicz over Welles.

At
the time of the Academy Awards, Welles already was prepar­ing two new films for
RKO, The Magnificent Ambersons and It's All True. However, the
studio, caving in to the political pressures brought about by the Hollywood community, withdrew its support of Welles's artistic freedom. While Welles was out
of the country, RKO cut forty minutes from The Magnificent Ambersons and
attached an inferior ending to the film previous to its release. Welles would
later declare: "They let the studio janitor cut The Magnificent
Ambersons in my absence." (Nevertheless, many crit­ics still believe The
Magnificent Ambersons, even with the poor edit­ing by the studio, to be as
accom­plished as Citizen Kane.) Furious at the studio's interference,
Welles turned his back on Hollywood rather than compromise his artistic vision.
As an indication of his disdain for the studio system and the members of the
film community, Welles remarked: "Hollywood is a golden suburb, perfect
for golfers, gardeners, mediocre men, and complacent starlets." The second
film, It's All True, rumored to be a remarkable film as well, was never released
by RKO. Stored in the studio vaults for years, the only print of the film was
eventually destroyed.

When
Welles exiled himself from Hollywood to Europe in order to preserve his
artistic integrity, he lost the financial backing needed to create films.
Unlike other artists who simply need a paint brush, or a pen, or a pair of
ballet slippers, or a musical instrument, a filmmaker cannot produce without
substantial funding.which—in today's world—is measured in millions of dollars. Ironically,
Welles's life imitated his art so closely that many fans of film began to
confuse Welles with Kane, somehow blending the fates of these two tragic
heroes. Like Kane, Welles represented the man who had spent his early years
achieving the success that exemplifies the American Dream, a contemporary
version of paradise, only to spend his later life confronting his loss of
paradise and its accompanying pain.

In
the same year that Citizen Kane was released, two other events, one in
the summer and the other in the winter, occurred which, oddly enough, might be
connected with the reminiscence of Welles's triumph and fall. In the summer of 1941,
the New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio strung together his record streak of batting
safely in 56 consecutive games. Recently, New York Times sports
columnist Dave Anderson declared that DiMaggio's feat represented
"baseball's most majestic record" and that it was "held by its
most majestic personali­ty." In the same manner that Anderson identifies
DiMaggio with 1941 in the world of sports, film crit­ics identify Welles and Citizen
Kane with 1941 in the world of cinema. However, the baseball community will
celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Yankee Clipper's accomplish­ments over
and over this summer with a sense of pride and honor, since Joe DiMaggio has
remained a cherished figure throughout the decades, embraced by the sport to which
he contributed so much. At the same time, one wonders what amount of guilt and
sadness instead will be felt by those members of the film community,
particularly the older figures of the Hollywood establishment, who belatedly
will celebrate Citizen Kane and Orson Welles this year.

Perhaps,
some might argue, a better baseball comparison to Welles would be Pete Rose,
who holds the National League record for batting safely in consecutive games
and who has just been banned from consideration for Cooperstown's Hall of Fame.
Like Welles, Rose had attained the American Dream and then lost it, finally
exiled by the ruling establishments of his profes­sion; however, Rose's exile has
occurred after the achievements of a full and enriching career. Film critics
will always wonder what great works Welles might have produced had the politics
of Hollywood not turned against him in mid-career. To extend the baseball
metaphor one step further, Welles, therefore, could be compared to Shoeless Joe
Jackson of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, the young phenom among the players
banned from baseball for gambling on the World Series, ironi­cally immortalized
in filmgoers' minds by a recent movie, Field of Dreams.

The
other event that also char­acterizes 1941 is the December 7th Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor,
which brought the United States into a war its people had tried throughout the
year to ignore—perhaps praying it would just go away. Many historians have written
of the oppressive presence of the news from the European warfront on the daily
lives of Americans in 1941. Most citizens were fearful of their nation's imminent
entry into the conflict, but all were hoping there would be some way to avoid
joining the battle. In the summer of 1941, Joe DiMaggio's extended batting
streak offered Americans something to follow from day to day in their
newspapers other than the battle victories or losses in Europe and the
spreading threat of Hitler's forces. In contrast, Citizen Kane reminded
Americans of the dangers represented by power and greed. DiMaggio extended more
than just his batting streak each sunny summer afternoon that he collected a
base hit. Each day his streak dominated the idle conversa­tions of Americans,
Joltin' Joe also extended the nation's sense of inno­cence and trust in the
security offered by the American Dream, distracting its citizens from the storm
approaching from overseas. On the other hand, Citizen Kane depicted the
end of innocence and the corruption of the American Dream. A pair of early
working titles originally considered for the film were American and John Citizen, U.S.A.Clearly, Welles wanted the film to be seen as a
metaphor for the dark direction toward which America was moving.

On
that "Day of Infamy" in December of 1941, Americans were forced to
face the dangerous elements lurking beyond their borders and an age of
innocence came to a close. In the decades ahead the distance from that inno­cent
era grew larger, replaced by a time filled with terrible experiences: the
atomic bomb, the McCarthy years, the violent civil rights strug­gle, the assassinations
of the sixties, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the drug epidemic, AIDS,
materialism, corrupt evangelists, insider trading on Wall Street, the savings
and loans scandal, etc. Today, Joe DiMaggio stands almost as a solitary symbol
of the American Dream in the manner it existed just before everything began to
unravel. At the age of 76, DiMaggio's confident, self-assured dignity appears
at old-timer games like a beacon shining brightly amidst turbulent waters. In contrast,
Charles Foster Kane fore­shadowed the many public figures, politicians and
personalities, who would be undone by their corrup­tion of the American Dream
in the latter half of the twentieth century, and Orson Welles became one of the
first victims of the new age.

In a
scene from Citizen Kane, a magnificently evocative moment occurs when
Kane's assistant, Bernstein, played by Everett Sloane, recalls: "One day,
back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey, and as we pulled out, there was
another ferry pulling in, and on it was a girl waiting to get off. A white
dress she had on. She was carrying a white para­sol. I only saw her for one
second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since,
that I haven't thought of that girl." Metaphorically, the girl in the
white dress, like Joe DiMaggio, might represent an unattainable inno­cence
remembered regularly only in daydreams, an emblem of the simpler, romantic
past, the lost paradise which can never be recap­tured.

Today,
a half century later, as the country finds itself at war again, one hopes that
the symmetry, symmetry suggested by the nation's unified response to the war,
will signal a conclusion to an era of torment and turmoil. Perhaps it may be
only wishful thinking, an attempt to regain the lost paradise, but one can hope
that as the earlier war initiated an era which in its darkest moments during
the sixties and seventies eventually tore the nation apart to a degree only surpassed
by the Civil War era, this war will begin to move the nation in a different direction.
As community members pull closer to one another, as larger congregations pray
together with a greater voice, as flags and ribbons symbolize a sense of
solidar­ity among the citizenry, it would be pleasant to think this unity might
continue into a new age—a period in which, once again, characters like Charles
Foster Kane are the excep­tion and role models like Joe DiMaggio are the rule.